NW Oklahoma windshield tour shows state’s oil patch decline
DRIVING FROM EDMOND TO CIMARRON CITY, CRESCENT, HENNESSEY, BISON, WAUKOMIS, ENID, CARRIER, DRUMMOND AND BACK — The oil patch ain’t what it used to be, to be sure.
The numbers tell the sad tale: 9,100 energy jobs lost in Oklahoma since peak employment last November. Gross production tax collections down. Sales tax collections down.
And, of course, crude oil at about 45 bucks a barrel, about 42 percent of the peak of $106 in June 2014.
Just drive somewhere you haven’t been in awhile. That’s what I did Tuesday and what I saw confirmed most of what I’ve been reading, but not everything.
Check out my video tour. I did it on a whim. No professional videographers were harmed, and none will feel any competition from me.
My only aim was to record for you what I saw with a somewhat knowing eye through my windshield.
Mostly what I know about the oil business is what I read in the newspaper. But I also know what I saw during the peak, then the swooping decline, of activity in the oil patch.
From summer 2013 until last March, I drove from my home in Edmond to a church in Carrier, northwest of Enid, every Sunday morning, and then back home in the afternoon or evening. That time period pretty much coincided with the oil price boom and swoon.
At the peak, the traffic along the route I took made me think of oil field truck traffic I saw and dodged on Interstate 20 and state and U.S. highways the summer of 2012 on vacation in West Texas. The booming-again Permian Basin was a sight to behold.
In 2013 through most of 2014, so was my route to church and back: State Highway 74 from Edmond north to SH 51, then west to Hennessey, then north on U.S. 81 to Enid, west on U.S. 412 to SH 132, then north to Carrier.
Sometimes I’d come back by way of SH 132 south from 412 through Drummond to 51, then east to Hennessey and back to 74 and south back home.
There’s talk that the price collapse has slashed demand for drilling equipment and oil field services so much that prices for them are down to where small operators are able to get in.
I saw little sign of it Tuesday on a quick trip from Edmond to the Enid area and back. A friend of mine, an out-of-work land man, said he knew of one active rig north of Enid.
It’s not dead out there, but the last chapter of good times sure hasn’t turned the page to the next.
The few gas stations-stores along the route seemed to have less business Tuesday afternoon than on most of the Sunday mornings I was passing through.
Oil-field service companies seemed to have more trucks on their lots than they could have out working.
New, shiny oil tank batteries dot the route, but drilling sites were rigless and equipment yards carved out of wheat fields and cow pastures were bare.
By the way, in my video, maybe I called a bare drilling site an empty equipment yard or vice versa. The point is: they were vacant and nothing was going on.
In Hennessey, I realized that the surest sign of drilling activity on most of my trips in 2013-2014 was absent on this drive: the fracking water pipes that snaked along both sides of SH 74 and SH 51 were gone. No pipes, no water, no drilling.
But that was just along the highways. I did see some tanker trucks and a few oil-field trucks, although most were empty flatbeds — and roustabouts surely don’t make much money running empty.
On the other hand, my drive took me into and back out of the STACK play, where the oil business isn’t exactly at rest. STACK stands for Sooner Trend, Anadarko (Basin), Canadian (and) Kingfisher (counties).
As my colleague, energy editor Adam Wilmoth, reported recently, E&P companies are working the STACK, ramping up rigs, not laying them down, and building up infrastructure.
They’re presumably taking advantage, while input prices are right, to get in position for the next positive chapter in the saga that is the Oklahoma oil business.